175: We Are the Dreamers of Dreams

Grumpy Old Geeks. A weekly talk show hosted by Brian Schulmeister and Jason DeFilippo discussing the finer points of what went wrong on the internet and who's to blame. The following content contains graphic, explicit, and vulgar language. And with that out of the way, welcome to Grumpy Old Geeks episode 175 for September 2nd, 2016. I'm Jason DeFilippo here with my co-host...

I'm Brian Schulmeister. What's up, Big Daddy? Not much. I'm a little sleep-deprived. Yeah, yeah. It happens. You millennials that whine about adulting, try parenting. Hey, man, I did puppying. Trust me, the first couple of months are going to be exactly the same between the two of us. Speaking of which, Jason, speaking of which, I'm glad you mentioned that, there was a lot of talk on previous episodes.

Oh, oh boy, when you have your kid. Oh boy, you think I post a lot of photos of Bam Bam. Oh boy. I did a little statistical analysis this morning, Jason. Okay. In the first week since my child was born, August 22nd through August 29th, I posted exactly four photos of my child. You posted four photos of Bam Bam in one day.

Okay. Eight photos total and one video. So, uh, suck it. You know what? That just means I love my dog more than you love your kid. That must be it. Hey, man. If you don't care enough to savor the moments for later, then what did you even have him for?

Oh, there's plenty of photos on my phone. I just don't, uh, trouble the world with him. Oh, well, you know what? If I have to go through it, so does everybody else. Apparently. I see what you did there. Mm-hmm. Apparently. Uh-huh. Yes. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

So, let's, uh, you are sleep-deprived. You have a child. Yeah. And, uh, how's it going so far? Oh, good. I mean, it's, you know, it's great. It's fun. It's, uh, I mean, you, it's, it's a complete and utter change. Like, everybody says it and you don't really believe it and then you have it and it's, it's a complete and utter life change.

Yep. Um, you know, don't really, when it's your own kid, you don't care. I thought I'd have issues with changing diapers. I've been pooed on, I've been peed on, and I've changed more diapers. I changed more diapers in three hours than my father did his entire life. You know, it's a, it's a whole new world.

Yeah. Yeah. I wish they had puppy diapers. That would have saved me some trouble, but. I'm sure they do. Yeah. I'm sure, I'm sure somebody sells them made from, you know, like virgin cotton and. Yes. I need to get vegan dog diapers. That's what I need. Well, you gotta move. You should move back to Santa Monica because.

I was going to say, we had a show title there. Vegan dog diapers. I like that. Yeah. Not moving back to Santa Monica. Give that one up. So, uh, since you do have the kid, I put in, uh, uh, link in the show notes here for, uh, you with the, you're the vaccination Nazi and, uh, which you should be because I, I, I, I'm on your side on this one, but, uh, yeah, California, they're, uh, they're, they're up in the ante.

We're, we're not messing around here anymore. So, uh, and rightfully so. I mean, this is kind of the epicenter. This is the, uh, the, uh, Jenny McCarthy epicenter of bullshit anti-vaxxing. Yeah. It started there. So that's where it needs to like, that's where, that's where the line in the sand needs to be drawn for the hippie dippy dumb fucks.

Yeah. Rich people problems basically. So, uh, I, I've also found a link for that and I'll just kind of read the quote first and then I'll read the title of the link, which is my favorite ever. Um, we cannot let irresponsible parents put the public health at risk just because they disagree with science. Measles is one of the most contagious diseases known to man.

It is even more contagious and deadlier than Ebola. 16 years ago, this country had wiped out the disease within our shores and all that effort went to waste because some parents listen more to celebrities like Jim Carrey and Jenny McCarthy than they do to doctors and scientists. This needs to change. And this California law is the first step. And the title of this article, federal judge tells anti-vaxxers to go fuck themselves, uphold strict California vaccinations.

Law. Now that we pissed off everybody that has an opinion and won't, or that gets pissed off when we have opinions and won't listen to the rest of the show. Uh, let's move off this topic. Okay. I do have one followup a little bit with that though, is the problem is there is good science and there's bad science because bad science is what started this whole problem with that asshole doctor in Britain who published the study about, uh, you know, the vaccinations cause. What was it? Uh, whatever it was. Um, autism, autism. That was it. Yeah. I was thinking, I think an Asperger's. I had the A, but

Yeah. Asperger's is, you know, autism light. Okay. Let's move on to more bad science because this took me about an hour and a half to read because I'm slow. This is one of the longest articles I think we've ever posted. And this is following up because we've been talking about how, um, particularly psychology is having some severe issues, uh, with replication that is putting in question, basically the entire validity of the field of everything. Every study that self-help is based on.

Yeah. I'm so glad I have a degree in this. Um, yeah. And this is, this is the big one. This is, this is a, a, a kind of a mainstay study. If, if you know next to nothing about psychology, you do know fake it till you make it. And that's kind of where this, that, that saying came from the study that basically this was a study that if you are not feeling so hot or whatever, you can basically just smile and forcing your body to make the motion of that will then affect your brain.

And you will just fake a smile and eventually you'll be happy. Yeah. And apparently they're saying it's, it's, it's basically changing your physicality changes your physiology, which turns out to not be so on point or at least it's not replicable yet. Yeah. Totally. Uh, not replicable like most other things in psychology. So, you know, I have faking it till you making it doesn't work. Apparently I don't know.

Take that pen out of your mouth, people, because it's not going to do you any good. Yeah. And, uh, you know, the other big news, which is something that I do need something to make me smile. Unfortunately, we did lose a Gene Wilder this week. Yep. Yep. He was an amazing comedian. He was, I was in that weird group that just didn't get his movies. So, you know, I, I, I recognize his talent. I, the only movie that I think I really bonded with was blazing saddles, but like young Frankenstein, I didn't get.

And I feel, I feel kind of chipped because I, you know, everybody loves him and I think he's fantastic, but it's just, I missed the Gene Wilder train, unfortunately. Wow. That's, that's pretty, yeah. Blazing saddles was a mainstay growing up for me and all my friends, uh, same with, uh, almost everything that he was in. I mean, young Frankenstein, uh, the best man, go back and watch it. Maybe you'll really dig it.

I was thinking about that now that I have a new TV, which we'll talk about later in software apps and gadgets. Uh, I will definitely, uh, I, I, I started putting them in my Netflix queue because I think I, I deserve to go back and watch some of those. I'm kind of going back to the classic. Uh, one of the ones that never really did much for me, but I'm going to go back and watch because it seemed to be so many people's favorites, uh, when they were posting things on Facebook was Silver Streak. Um, which I never really got into, but.

Oh, you know what? That was a really good movie. Okay. I really liked that one. Yeah. I'm going to watch that this weekend. I think you should go ahead and give, um, give young Frankenstein another. I think you'll dig it. I mean, I really do. Um, two quick links in the show notes. And I just want to also state that this didn't really come as much of a surprise. He's been out of the public eye for a long time. Uh, also quick note that they chose the family. Actually, Gene Wilder chose not to, uh, publicize the fact that he had Alzheimer's because he wanted kids when they saw Willy Wonka to not have this.

Uh, undercurrent of adult, you know, he's sick. So that was really cool. Uh, link of the show notes about comedians paying tribute to Gene Wilder, just a bunch of different things that people did on Twitter. Also dug up, uh, Gene Wilder did an interview with PBS and it's up on PBS digital studios, blink on blink. It's fantastic.

That was really good. Yeah. Yeah. I watched that this morning. I was just like the, the bit about the cane and Willy Wonka I'd never known. And that's, it's just like the depth of perception that that took to come up with that was just like, wow. He knew his craft. He based the entire character on that one moment. Yeah. It's fantastic. Yeah. Yeah. Definitely check that out. You will be missed in the news.

Oh, poor SpaceX and poor Zuckerberg. Rocket go boom. Shit go boom. Yes. And it's funny is I, I heard, I heard about this and then I watched some of the videos and then Elon Musk's little tweets is like, ah, we don't know what happened. I'm just wondering if Jake Busey was up there on the, you know, every time I see a rocket blow up, I think of a contact when Jake Busey snuck in and sabotage things.

Like if Google hired Jake Busey to get up there and so, so, uh, Africa can't get internet for Zuck. That is pretty funny. Um, it was, it's a, it's a big week for science news, uh, particularly space news. So that bit's a bummer. Um, my next article probably would have been the biggest story, but it got trumped. So we'll get there eventually. Uh, there is a new earth like exoplanet that has been discovered. It's been hailed as the biggest astronomical discovery of the century until a little bit later on, maybe.

Uh, there was another one in between there that I want to bring up, but I don't have any notes, but I'm going to bring that up. Okay. It's in the habitable zone of Proxima Centauri, our nearest neighboring star. So all this time we've been wondering what the hell's going on, how many other earth like planets there could possibly be out there. Shockingly, we found one in the closest spot we could. So I have a feeling there's going to be an awful lot of them out there and it's in the Goldilocks zone. So exactly. So it's roughly 1.3 times the size of earth, but it's a much bigger star system out there. So it is in the Goldilocks zone.

And, uh, it probably could have liquid water and who the hell knows what else. Interesting. Yeah. So there was a story about SETI this week where they're like, Oh my God, they're out there. They're coming for us. Oh, the aliens. And then they're like, no, it actually came from earth. Um, so it was the shortest, uh, thing that ever happened. I mean, it was a 24 hour turnaround. They're like, actually, no, this signal came from earth. You guys are going crazy about this. And they'd had this signal for a year and they were trying to, so these guys spent a year trying to, you know, uh, get the validity of it. I feel bad for the SETI guys.

Uh, but then half of me doesn't, it's like, uh, just go do something else because we're never going to find them. You know, our, our, our lifespan is too short.

So, you know, you never know. And they'll find us. That's what I'm saying. You know what? They'll show up one day and come and knock on our door. Then, then we have aliens. So yes. Good times. Uh, so the other big notable news this week, and this isn't confirmed yet, but it looks like they're on the track. Um, physics could make your head explode. Have a fun time reading Brian Green books. If you really want to get into it.

No, I love reading those damn things. I think he's got a new one coming out. I can't wait. My brain will hurt for two months, but, uh, apparently they think that they have found a fifth fundamental force of the universe.

Does this explain dark matter in theory? It could. Okay. Yeah. So they're, they're looking into it. So it's, uh, theoretically, it is a force carrying particle. It's a very weak force, like, uh, the two, uh, gravity and electromagnetism. So who knows? Um, this could be super interesting. It, it, you know, it's the whole theory is this will change everything as we know it. Although it won't change anything for the rest of us. Cause none of us understood any of this to begin with.

Yeah. No, I listened to my brother talk about physics and I'm just like, man, man, me stupid. Yeah. So let's get back down to earth. Okay. Let's get back down to earth. So Google has introduced a new thing called couch. Well, not shit. I'm reading the stupid headline. It's not called couch surfing. What are they calling it? Uh, it's expanding a carpool pilot to in the Bay area to users of ways. Um, so basically it is a carpooling app. Oh, it's called ride with. There you go.

That's okay. So, so the headline is if Uber is Airbnb for cars, Google just introduced couch surfing. It's an interesting concept. I don't have too much of a problem with this because all it is, is trying to get people to carpool to work. Yeah. Okay. We said that this is, this is not groundbreaking. I mean, we had that for forever in San Francisco. There was like, you know, the place where you could set the pickup at the end of the bridge or whatever. And there was all that stuff in the, in the way back machine. You have to go way back kids to figure that one out. But yeah, we'll see how it goes.

Yeah. We'll see. Whatever. It is what it is. Uh, Apple is in the news, uh, for a number of things, particularly basically they, uh, they were, the EU has ruled that they owe a ridiculously large amount of money in taxes. Um, and they basically said, well, we can either leave you the jobs or you can have the tax money, which would you like?

Yeah. And this is a weird situation because Ireland does not want the tax money. They're basically saying, no, no, no, no, no. You keep your money. We want the jobs. Yeah. But EU is saying, no, that doesn't work like that. We have to have these rules across the board. You can't, you can't say no to the tax money. We want the tax money and you're part of the EU. So you have to do what we say. So interesting.

Yeah. It's very, it's, it's, it's, it's a sticky wicket as Dave Bittner would say. Um, yeah, we'll see how this one plays out. But I mean, the, the funny thing is it's like for Apple, it's, yeah, it's like what? 12, 13 billion dollars. You know, that's like a parking ticket for them. Right?

Yeah. I mean, Apple has the money, but they're beholden to their shareholders to not just throw money away if they can get away with it. Um, since I am a shareholder, I would, I would appreciate if they would make their share price rise, not drop. So this is how the wicket gets stickier. Um, yeah. And again, like Ireland does not necessarily want the money. Although I was speaking to a friend of mine who was Irish last night and they did the math and it works out to about $3,000 per person, which is not to be sneezed at.

No. Uh, so I mean, at the end of the day, you gotta, if you're in the EU and it's EU law, Ireland's kind of got to take the money. So you got to play by the rules. That's the problem. That's, that's the thing. You can't just pick and choose the things that you want. You can't just Uber your way out of this one.

Well, people always seem to, don't they? Yes, they do. Uh, speaking of Apple continuing along with that line, there's a long Mossberg article about it, uh, and about the post jobs Apple and how there's no breakthrough products because the, even you Jason at this point have to admit the watch is a dud.

I still love it. I've got it. I wear it every day. I don't, I don't deny that you enjoy it, but as a breakthrough product, it's a dud. Oh, I never said it was a breakthrough product. I said, I said it did what I needed it to do. I didn't say it was like the be all end all. I would never actually recommend anybody buy one for my particular use case.

It serves me well, but if anybody said, should I buy an Apple watch? I'd be like, hell no. Yeah. You know, if you're, if you're on Slack all day, sure. Get one. If you're not, there's no reason to, I mean, the sleep tracking stuff that I talked about in last episode has been kind of game changing with how I, you know, get my daily night's sleep. Um, but for the most part, yeah, it's just, it's, it's an extension of the phone. It's another screen on the phone. That's all it is for me. And I don't, I don't Dick Tracy, you know, my phone calls because the speaker,

and the, uh, the microphone on a terrible, but you know, for the most part, what I bought it for was experimentation, seeing if it was actually worth the time of day for me, it is. I would, like I said, don't buy one, but, uh, yeah, we'll see. We'll see how Apple watch two is. And I hear really good things about a watch os three, you know, it's, it's much faster and the battery life is better. So we'll see.

Yep. Well, the article just goes on at great length to say that even though they, there hasn't been any real innovations whatsoever.

Uh, they are making a staggering amount of money, which I would argue is kind of the point and all I really give a shit about. So this is business. I don't under, it's a Silicon Valley mindset that we're putting on people. GE does not necessarily innovate anymore, but they still make billions upon billions of dollars because they, they have created the products that we all need. And we don't necessarily need to incredible amounts of innovation anymore.

The phones are great. We don't need one that speaking of which we'll talk about shortly. We don't need one where I drag my knuckle across and it does something different. Who cares? The phone works. You know, it's, it's getting to the point where phones are like peanut butter and mayonnaise. They, you know, they sell gazillions of dollars worth of it because we need it. We use it every day. And then when one breaks, we get another one. And yes, so it works.

It's what, it's what we call mature markets. Ah, yes. I think AR, AR is where it's really going to be, you know, the next thing is going to be. So the phones are just, they're, they're, yeah, it's our conduit to the network.

So whatever, whatever, whatevs, whatevs, um, Amazon is launching a streaming service, uh, which is fine. I mean, everybody can get into the game. Who cares? Uh, the problem though, for people that happen to write music is the, we're now going to be getting into price wars and not price wars just for the sake of price wars.

But this is a walled garden wars. Um, if you own as an Amazon echo in theory, instead of paying the regular, you know, nine 95 slash 10 bucks a month that everybody does, you will get all your music for as little as $4 a month. Ooh, I'll take that. Oh yes. Which means less money for musicians.

Oh, well, you know, they're not getting paid anyway. So pretty much. Yeah. I, I, I, that couple of bucks isn't really going to tip the scales because like how many people have echoes, you know, like almost nobody. So, yeah, I copied and pasted a ton of stuff from the article in here because I was passionate about it the other night, but today I can't really be bothered. Yeah.

Link in the show notes. Go read it. Yeah. If you care, nothing we haven't said on the show before. Yeah. Uh, another article came out, uh, according to wired about how, how young people use emojis and how us old people are doing it all wrong. Apparently. Yeah. Guess my ass kids get off my emoji lawn.

Okay. Uh, we don't, you don't want to hear any of these. Go for it. I know I'm curious. I want to hear what you have to say. Well, uh, posting food on Instagram is a complete no, no, that, that shows you're an old person. You do not do that. If you're young, uh, you never use the same.

Uh, sorry. My 25 year old brother posts everything when I go out to eat. So wrong. He's no, he's an old age. Jason. These are high school kids. He's already old. Okay. We're ancient. He's old. These are kids. Uh, you never use the same picture and a personal message that you post to your public Snapchat. That's like a very, very bad. And you get called out for it. If you open and don't reply, that is rude. You must reply. Which is one thing I actually enjoy about that. That's nice.

Um, yeah. And it goes on and on, uh, to different things like the derp emoji and how they use it and the blushing smiley face, which conveys polite romantic refusal. Oh, really? As in, hi, I'm not interested. Sorry. Yeah. Let's go suck your own dick and get out of my emoji.

Pretty much. Yes. And, uh, there's all kinds of things in here. It's quite interesting, actually. Um, it's become a real language for, for the kids. Okay. Uh, I'll, I'll, I'll give this a gander, but, uh, I use, I use my, cause I hate emoji anyway. So I use it ironically.

I'm a, I am an old retro hipster emoji user, I guess. I suppose. I started using it ironically and now I just use it because it is what it is. I use it so I don't have to type as much. Yeah. It's good for that. Well, and also on my Apple watch, I get emoji options now because it's smart enough to know when I can reply with certain different emojis.

So if somebody texts me, I can use a, whatever the, the contextually appropriate emoji is with one touch. It's great. Well, there you go. And pretty soon you'll be able to use different touches to bring up different emojis. Uh, this is the new technology that I just alluded to a little bit ago. It's by, I don't even know how to say the name of the company.

Queef. Oh, quick. Queef. Oh, quick. So I'll call him queef. Shockingly a Mountain View, California based startup. Of course. Not, not, not at many of those around. No, no, no. So it's a technology called finger sense, which, which I think if, if the technology is called finger sense, I think queef is actually a much more appropriate name for the company.

Yeah, probably. So it's just, it would work with any existing phone. It's just a software update. I mean, at this point, people aren't even using the force push on, on Apple. So the idea that if you use your knuckle instead of your finger, it'll work differently. Seems a bit silly to me. I don't know. I mean, I get it. I, when you watch the demos, you're like, Oh, how cool is that? But then you also realize it's, we're solving problems that don't really exist. It's not that difficult now.

Solving problems that don't exist since 2004. That's Silicon Valley's mantra. Pretty much. Yeah. Solving problems that do exist. The European telecommunications regulation has published final guidelines on their net neutrality rules, when which they tightened up a lot of the gray areas. And this is very, very good.

How does it compare to ours? Way better. Oh, surprising. They closed a bunch of loopholes that we have still have open. They, they, they, I mean, they very specifically stated a whole bunch of rules. So, you know, you can't create these fast lanes and specialized services for different companies and things like that, which of course we're allowing here.

So, yeah, it's a gray area here still. Yes. Speaking of gray clouds. Nice, nice one. Yeah, it was pretty good, right? The FBI says it's having a real problem finding hackers because they all smoke pot and that's still a federal government.

No, no. Oh, poor babies. Yes, you cannot, if you cannot pass the drug test, you cannot work for the government and most hackers are smokers. So, that's the interesting thing. Do these guidelines actually apply in states like, so if I want to work for the FBI but I live in California where medical marijuana is legal, can I still, and I, and I have a card, can I still work for the FBI?

No. See, that's stupid. You can because it's a government, it's a federal government organization. Now, if it was the California government's own version of the FBI, whatever that might be, then you'd be okay, but not for government regulation. Well, yeah, that's why we're losing.

Well, basically, that's what the article says. So, you can read that in the show notes. It's from Vice. It's also quite a long article, but just amusing. I'm loving Vice lately, man. Their motherboard stuff and everything. Those guys are killing it over there. They're knocking it out of the park. I mean, you think journalism is dead and all of a sudden something like that comes up.

So, kudos to you guys. But don't watch the TV show because it will depress the hell out of you. Oh, I know. I tried. I was like, God, their site has been so good. I should watch some of these shows. I was just in a fetal ball crying. I know. I watched like four seasons of it, like binged it in a weekend, and I'm just like, I can't move.

The radiation's going to get me or the Somali pirates are going to get me or something's going to get me. Something, yep. And I was changing diapers this morning, so I wasn't able to join you in Bittner. So, I don't know if you guys talked about WhatsApp. No, we did not. If you have not and you use WhatsApp, you should go update your settings if you'd like.

Because, according to this article, WhatsApp betrayed its longstanding commitment to privacy when the company announced the app will now share user data with Facebook for the purpose of selling ads. Existing users have up to 30 days to opt out, which you can do quite simply. Betrayed, because a free service wants to make money.

And, I mean, we laughed at this. We're like, you dumb shits. Of course they're going to sell you ads. Of course. Just not yet. I don't understand you people that just think everything should be free and there's never any cost. It must be an awesome world, you people.

I know. I know. I want to live in that world. I hope my son grows up in your world. As soon as you go invent that replicator, then you're fine. As soon as we can take care of, you know, all those physical tangibles, we need to survive. Yes. You know, Maslow's hierarchy of needs actually still is a thing.

So, once that's done, we're moving on. We've got to disrupt that, Jason. We'll be right back. Enjoy a word from our sponsors. This episode of Grumpy Old Geeks is sponsored by FreshBooks. As you know, Brian and I both run small businesses, invoicing and collecting payments has always been one of the most painful things we have to deal with.

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Security? All right. We're back again this week with Dave Bittner from the Cyber Wire. How are you doing, Dave? I'm doing great. Doing great. Glad to be here. Now, for the new listeners, I want you to explain what Cyber Wire is, who you are, and what you do for them.

All right. Well, the Cyber Wire is a daily news brief and also a daily podcast. We cover cybersecurity news. We've been publishing the daily news brief since 2012, and the podcast is newer. We just started that back in the spring. So our goal is really to look out there, see what's going on in cybersecurity, and kind of distill it down to a digestible bit of news for you to go through every day.

So we put what's important in front of you, and we add our own analysis to help you make sense of all the cybersecurity news out there. And we do it every day. Awesome. Yes, you do do it every day. But now you've got a new thing. You're doing some special reports, I see? That's right.

We do typically about once a month, maybe some more if there's a show or something like that. But we do special edition versions of our podcast, which are rather than the daily news, we focus on some topic that would be interesting to people who are interested in both cybersecurity and other things as well.

And we just put out one this week. I want to plug. This one's on fundraising and cyber startups. We went out and we found a bunch of different CEOs of various cybersecurity companies, and we just talked to them about how they started their companies, where they got their money. Some of them are self-funded.

Some of them, most of them have been through venture capital funding. So even if you're not in cybersecurity, this is a great show for you to listen to if you've been thinking about starting your own business or if you have your own business. Because sooner or later, everyone who has their own business faces the question of, you know, where am I going to get more money?

I have ambitions, and in order to reach them, I need to raise some money. So this show turned out, I'm really proud of it. We've got some really good insights from some really successful people in the field. Now, I don't want to spoil anything, but since this is Grumpy Old Geeks, you know I have to ask.

Were there any crowd-funded startups? No, actually, in this one, there were not. There were not. We do have one or two that were self-funded. We have one who John Trout runs a company called Bracada, and they were actually on their way to a Series A round of funding, but they scored some really good deals.

They sold a bunch of their product. Oh, they made money the old-fashioned way. They made money the old-fashioned way, and they actually called off their Series A round. I would say postponed it. I think they still have plans of doing one eventually. But, you know, John Trout, who runs the company, is very conservative.

He doesn't like to go out and get money if he doesn't need it, and to his credit, he held off. He, you know, put the brakes on it. So, really interesting stories in this one. So, if you have a chance, go to thecyberwire.com, and we hope you'll check it out. Now, you said postponed in there, and that just made me think that that would be actually a pretty good post-hack tool.

Because you've been postponed. You have been, right. After the pwning. Yes, it's, have a cocktail. It's time to be postponed. All right. Well, let's get into some actual news here. All right. Boy, this is really an interesting one. So, there's a company called Muddy Waters, LLC.

They're an investment research firm. They teamed up with a cybersecurity research firm called MedSec, and they published some research on some pacemakers made by a company, St. Jude Medical. Now, here's the interesting part about this.

The whole reason that Muddy Waters hired MedSec to do this research was so that they could short the stock of St. Jude's. So, imagine you're St. Jude's. You make pacemakers. You know, this is sort of a mission-critical device.

Do you think? Yeah. So, MedSec and Muddy Waters team up. MedSec does the research. They find what they say is a serious vulnerability. Rather than going and informing St. Jude's that they have this problem, they make a public announcement after having shorted the stock and profit.

Oh, man. How slimy. Well, you know, that's the overall reaction. We spoke with Ben Yellen, who's a senior law and policy analyst that comes on our show regularly. We checked with him on it. He was basically gobsmacked about it.

He said this is – the word he kept using was novel, which is sort of a lawyer's way of saying we haven't seen this before. And what they did is technically not illegal. Yeah, that's what I heard. It's just scummy. It is. Now, MedSec and Muddy Waters are saying that – they're justifying this by saying that this is a way to kind of force St. Jude to take care of these problems.

That if they went to them directly, St. Jude likely would have not done anything or not done anything quickly enough. And so if you hit them where it hurts with their stock price, then they have no choice but to take action. And, hey, if we short the stock in the meantime and make a few bucks off of it, well, hey, what's the problem with that?

So overwhelmingly people are raising eyebrows and really pointing to the ethical issues with this, which are many. There are some people who are defending it who are saying, you know, there's nothing wrong with this. It is not illegal and maybe this is a good way to get them to pay attention to it.

Now, since the story broke, there are some other security researchers who have gone in and looked at these pacemakers and they're saying, no, there really isn't a problem here. They don't think that the MedSec's research was accurate. They're saying that pacemakers are doing exactly what they were designed to do, which is, you know, basically when they get hacked, the pacemaker goes into what's called a safe mode,

where it just kind of does its job, keeps the heart beating, but shuts down to any outside communications, which seems to me to be a good thing for a pacemaker to do. Yeah, that's a good fail safe. That's failing forward, you know. Right, exactly.

But, you know, it's an interesting thing. We were talking around the offices here about, you know, imagine some sort of ransomware. If you could get into a device like this and basically say, you know, I'm not just shutting down your computer, but if you don't send me... I don't know, $1,000, I'm going to shut down your pacemaker.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, so the IoT. Yeah, no, this is just... I was thinking about this. It's like slashing somebody's tires to get them to wash their car. It's really strange, but... Yeah. That's why, like, that's why anything that they're saying is like, oh, we were trying to do it to get them to fix their vulnerabilities.

I call bullshit on that. Well, that's the general consensus. It's definitely the minority of people are taking their side on it. So, you know, again, Ben Yellen, our expert, said that he would not be surprised to see the SEC, the Security Exchange Commission, taking a closer look at this.

Because while it may not technically violate the law, it is certainly many considered to be outside of the spirit of the law. And, you know, profiteering off of this sort of thing is going to... It deserves a closer look. Indeed. So we'll see how it plays out.

All right. What do we got next? Well, there was a Minecraft account dump, 71,000 accounts leaked. That doesn't seem like that many since so many people play Minecraft. No, I don't think so. I mean, you know, I don't know. Yeah. Get up into the hundreds of thousands and pretty soon you're talking about real numbers.

We'll talk about real numbers in a second, but that's why I said 71,000, like nowadays, seems like, eh, that's nothing. Yeah, this was from Minecraft World Map, which is a popular fan site. And 71,000 accounts were stolen from Minecraft.

So... Okay, so this wasn't Minecraft itself. This was just a fan site. That's right. Yes. This is accounts on the fan site. So the point here is, again, if you are reusing passwords, don't. Yeah. And also go, you know, we want to point out, go check haveibeenpwned.com and see if your email address is listed.

That's sort of the best place to go check and see if you're part of one of these big data dumps. So we were talking about 71,000 accounts leaked. Well, there was a four-year-old hack from Dropbox that exposed 68 million logins. That's what I'm saying. 71,000 in the grand scheme of things doesn't seem that bad.

No, no, indeed. So, yeah, millions of credentials leaked from Dropbox. And what people are... This is an old leak. This is from 2012. What people are pounding on Dropbox about is that when this happened, Dropbox really kind of underplayed the initial breach.

You know, they did tell people to reset their accounts, and they're doing that again now. Yeah. Now, I've got the emails this week from Dropbox saying, you know, anybody that has an account that hasn't changed their password since 2012. And I have a dead account that I never used, so I got emails from that one. And I got an email from haveibeenpwned because they monitor my email address.

Yeah, it's an old one. You know, again, I know we say this pretty much every week, but, you know, don't reuse passwords. If you haven't changed your password on Dropbox since 2012, go ahead and do that. Yeah, we're just going to say it every week regardless because, I mean, we're on episode 175 of Grumpy Old Geeks.

You've only been here about, you know, maybe 10 episodes so far. But for 165 before that, we've been saying the same thing. And I think we have a 3% conversion rate on people changing to 1Password. So it's a long road to hoe. That kind of leads right into our next story, which is, this was on Ars Technica, and the headline is, So much for counter phishing training, half of people click anything sent to them.

So that backs up my numbers from last week. Yeah, even people who claim to be aware of the risks click out of curiosity. So, and this is mostly, you know, if I send you a link, so if there's something that I send you, you know, you think it's for me, even if it's not, you will most likely click through that link just because you can't help yourself.

You want to see what it is. I will tell you, I fell for this a couple years ago. I was, I got a message on Twitter from a friend of mine. All it said was, hey, Dave, you are hilarious in this video. I wanted to see that, right?

No, you're tipping all the triggers there. It's like your friend sent it to you. So you've got, you know, the social side of it there. They're name checking you and using your ego to get you to click on something. Boom, done. That's it. And it worked. And it absolutely worked. And they, and I got pwned. They took, they took over my Twitter account and, um, you know, hilarity ensued and I had to reset everything and all that kind of thing.

So, hey, look, it happens to the best of us, but what's, I think what this gets back to is that with all the technology, it's really the human factor that, that time after time is really the weak part. Um, we had a story earlier this week on our show about, um, you know, there's fishing, there's spear phishing, which is a targeted attack.

Um, and then there's whaling, which is when you go after a really high value targets. So a CEO or something like that. And some of these people who are doing whaling, they will bide their time. They will take months or in some cases, even years to get to know the rhythms, the, the habits of a CEO.

So that, for example, there was a case where the CEO goes on vacation and, uh, someone in the company gets what, what they think is an email from the CEO that says, Hey, you know, we're, we, we just, we're closing this deal with, uh, with one of our suppliers.

Um, I need you to send, um, these, um, not even money. I need you to send these, uh, these names, addresses, and social security numbers for these employees to our, to our supplier at this email address. Well, the person who's working says, well, I, I certainly want to help the boss while he's out on vacation.

I'll, I'll get to this right away. And, um, all those identities get stolen. Fun times. So it doesn't even have, yeah. So it doesn't even have to be money. But, um, anyway, the point is that, um, even with training, people, uh, fall for these things. It's just human nature and they're tough to defend against. Yes, they are.

I mean, that's, this is the war we wage. Uh, moving on, uh, there was some, um, Android malware. It's called dress code. Fancy. Yes, yes. Uh, and what's interesting about it is it's found in over 40 Google Play Store apps. Whoa. Yeah.

So, you know, the, look, we like to think about the Google Play Store on the Android side, the Google Play Store being secure. And on the, on the, uh, iOS side, uh, the app store being secure. And, uh, unfortunately in the Google Play Store, it seems like it's not that unusual for a handful of these to slip through, um, pretty regularly.

Yeah. I've never thought of the Android, I mean, the Google Play Store is secure ever. No. Well, I mean, it's, you know, I guess it's all relative. You know, it's better to get your apps through the Play Store than just, you know, sideloading them from somewhere else. True, true. Um, at least there's some sort of curation going on there.

But, but, uh, I, I think it's, I think it's fair to say that the Google Play Store is a little less strict, a little more loosely, uh, curated than, say, um, the iOS app store. Um, but in this case, uh, address code has, has been detected on about 40 apps.

Uh, what this does is, uh, it communicates with, uh, with a botnet, with a, with a botnet, a command and control server. And, uh, they can, uh, ping your device and send malicious code to your device and use your device as part of a botnet. Now, this next one has me very scared.

Okay. I had to do some checking on it. Uh, this is OS X, uh, keydnap. I like that. Yeah, and I have to say, I just, I, part of the reason I included this was I just love that word because it sounds like an old, it sounds like an old Ren and Stimpy cartoon, you know. Keydnap. Keydnap.

So it's, it's called Keydnap. Right. Yes, um, so it's keydnap because, um, what it does is it goes and, um, steals the contents of your OS X keychain. And on OS X keychain is where all of your passwords are stored.

And it's, you know, it's generally pretty good. It's considered pretty safe, uh, unless you get, uh, something like this on your system. This is noteworthy too because, you know, um, exploits to OS X are fewer and farther between than on some other operating systems. So this comes in via, um, there's a BitTorrent app called Transmission and, uh, the code was found in Transmission.

Also noteworthy that this is the second time that, uh, Transmission has been the, uh, delivery source of some malware. I know, I had to do a double take when I saw this. I'm like, I thought that's already happened. It's like, nope, they did it again. It's like, urrrr. They did it again.

Uh, it's significant too because the Transmission app was a signed app, which. Yeah. Yeah, so that's Apple's way of, of reassuring you that the app is, is who is what it says it is and that there's some security, uh, involved with it. But it's a signed app and it delivered this malware.

So, um, you, there is, there is a way to, you can go in, um, in the terminal. You can go in and find out if you have it or not. Trust me, I've already been going through this entire list. So, if you, uh, yeah, just crack open your copy of iTerm or your terminal app and, and just check for these files.

The links will be in the show notes and then you can go, uh, grab these, these file names. But, yeah, fortunately, whew, because I use Transmission and notice that I'm on, on the same version, uh, 2.9.2. And, yeah. Because I checked, I checked for updates yesterday. No, they didn't get me.

I, I got lucky. It was only on their server for, I want to say, like, 24 to 48 hours. It wasn't up very long, but, um, you know, long enough for, that's, that's, uh, cold comfort to the people who got, uh, by it, so. So, I don't think there's, you know, the one thing that they haven't done is rev the, the, um, version number.

Because it seems like if you have the infected version, if they rev the actual version number, your auto update cycle would be triggered and then you could get, you know, the newer one, which would then, and then get, give you some kind of warning and saying, and then like the new version could check to see if it's been infected or if your system's been infected.

That would be, I think, the best way to do it if I was working for Transmission. Uh, that would be, I would say, I, I don't want to speculate too widely here, but I'd say by, by, uh, by virtue of the fact that this is the second time this has happened to them, that perhaps they're not running too, too, uh, too tight a machine there, too tight a ship over there, the transmission, but, uh, maybe, uh, the second time will maybe get their attention in a way that the first time did not.

So, you know, good, good luck to them. Um, uh, I don't, you know, I guess it's a good app. You, you say you use it, so it's a useful app, right? It's the best torrent client out there for, uh, OS 10, except for the part where. Except for the malware. Well, that's your problem.

Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the show? Exactly. All right. All right, last story, last story. We got to wrap this puppy up. Uh, so there's been a lot of discussion about voting records. You know, we're coming up on an election here in the U.S. Uh, there's been stories of voting records being, uh, hacked by the Russians, uh, including, uh, the Democratic National Committee email dump.

Um, there's a story in Motherboard. It's called, uh, voter records get hacked a lot and you can just buy them anyway. And the point of this is that, um, you know, these, these hacking stories, the hacking situation isn't really as bad as a lot of, uh, stories are making them out to be. Um, yes, it is not unusual for voting records to get hacked.

But most of the time what happens is people just take the voting records. It's not, it's not as though people are going in and altering the outcomes of elections. The vast majority of these are people just going in and grabbing the data. Um, and there's all kinds of interesting data in voting records.

But the other point that this story makes is that most of these records you can either just go ask for or you can just buy them from the election, uh, the election committees in, in the jurisdiction, wherever you want to get them from. So it's not really like super secret data, you know, say, no, it's not save you 10 bucks in a, in a, in stamps to, to get it just by asking.

It's okay. Right. And they make them available for, for, you know, elections. If you're a, if you're a candidate, you can buy all kinds of information from the, from the, uh, from the election, uh, committee in your local town or state or whatever. And, um, and so the vast majority of, of the, of these records are that sort of thing.

Uh, you know, this is something we've covered on the cyber wire. And, um, the conclusion really, what people are saying about the, the angle with the Russians is that what they may be trying to do is just, uh, seed some uncertainty. You know, they're, they're, they're trying to, on the one hand, they're trying to kind of, um, let us know that they're capable of this because the, the theory goes that if they didn't want us to know they were doing this, right?

Um, so if they're leaving breadcrumbs, that means, you know, they want us to know that they're doing this to sort of say, Hey, we can do this, uh, as a, as a little, um, you know, spy versus spy, maybe a little intimidation, that sort of thing. Putting us on notice of what, that they're capable of doing this, um, and then also seeding doubt within the, the U S public about the, uh, the veracity of our, uh, of our election system.

You know, so there are political reasons to do that as well. Um, but, but there aren't, there aren't many people saying that they're out to alter the results of, of, uh, the coming presidential election or anything like that. Okay. Well, this is going to be an interesting election. November is going to be very strange.

Yeah, it is. Hank, please hold on to the bar. Yes. All right, Dave. Well, thank you for joining us again. Everybody go check out the cyber wire podcast and newsletter and the special editions that are out now. And, uh, we'll talk to you next week, Dave. All right. Always a pleasure. Talk to you soon.

Comment of the week. So you were out for a little bit because you had your little bundle. Oh, joy and poop coming. Um, I got my, my one week of, uh, paternity leave. That's one stinking week. That's all you get, dude. I took zero with bam, bam.

Oh, for God's sake. Actually, no, that's not true. That's not true. I did. I did take a week. Yeah, I took one week. So that's all you get. Oh, you gave me motherfucker. Hey, at least I, at least I showed up and did a show when I took a week off. You didn't, we didn't even do a show. Yeah.

Anyway, I saved a couple of comments, uh, in here that, uh, needed your handy touch. Even though we had a guest host last week, I saved them just for you. But first off, Richard cartoon gave us a very generous donation via PayPal. Thank you very much, Richard. And if that's your real last name, that's badass.

It is. Hopefully, hopefully you're a cartoonist or probably you, the last thing you want to do is draw. It's like probably hates comic books. Exactly. Uh, let's see. We got a comment on Patreon, uh, from Jack Engel. A few episodes ago, you talked about Stranger Things.

I watched it and loved it. I am from the Midwest in the 70s and 80s. It was a fun ride. Like I was around my old buddies. It reminded me of a great movie called Super 8, which I, I watched that as well. Um, can't wait for season two. Also, Lucas Hahn, welcome to the world and hope your dad and friends fix it for you. Big smile.

Uh, thank you, Jack. I don't think we'll be fixing anything, but, uh, you never know. We don't fix it. We just bitch about it. Exactly. And Super 8 was one of the, uh, major inspirations for a lot of the stuff in, in Stranger Things. As was the entire 1980s. Yes, that too. Uh, William D. Eisenhower, which is a very odd spelling of Eisenhower.

It's Eisenhür. Yes, it's auf Deutsch. Yes. On Patreon, you mentioned you could pimp something out of mine at the $10 level. Well, hell yes, we can. So, uh, if you could mention my book, we will. It's called Sudoku Zilla. Yes. And, uh, this is, I, I, my brain hurts when I do Sudoku.

I'm not good at it. This is a 100 by 100 page or puzzle Sudoku that is in the form of a book. So it's not even linear. You have to like flip pages. It's like, remember the Thomas guide back in the day in Los Angeles, we had this giant map book.

I still have one in my car. Don't know why. I do too. I don't even live in Los Angeles. Um, so you have to match. This is like the master Sudoku puzzle. Uh, it looks really cool. Many five-star ratings. So definitely go check out Sudoku Zilla. Yep.

We have the link in the show notes so, uh, we can wet our beak a little bit, which he suggested we do as well. So please use that link. Uh, we also have a comment from Lawrence Lee, friend of the show. He writes in fairly often. This is the one I saved for you. So let's knock this one out of the park for Lawrence. Okay.

Perhaps you gentlemen have already discussed this and I missed it. Autonomous AI guards to stalk the internet fighting hackers. Um, big link from new scientist.com ho hum, but it's the flip side going rogue about halfway down. That is making me wonder whether this may be that. Oh shit. Why didn't we fucking see this coming event that will make us puny humans finally into subservient pawns in the immoral world of our digital overlords.

Ooh, I made it all the way through that sentence. I mean, ransomware with no ransom demand on a massive scale grid collapse. IOT run amok. Couldn't a state or soulless jumble cope just digitally inoculate their own machines and loose their autonomous cyber hounds on the rest of the world? Sure. I know. But why would they do that?

And sure. I know already this is at least decades away. Tic-tac-toe chess go. Tell me a bedtime story that will let me sleep again. Um, I do believe that we have seen this coming. It's 99% of cyber fiction. Uh, well, actually there are companies that are out there right now that are using AI to, uh, map traffic and find patterns in traffic that will find, let them find anomalies.

And these are, these are services you can hire right now. Well, you can even go one step further than that. I mean, we're using AIs right now, and this is something I've been looking into to predict the stock market, uh, that they're doing, they're doing the same thing. They're trying to find patterns and, you know, little one-offs and then you, you know, there, there are, uh, there's a mutual fund I think that you can sign up for that is basically all AI based, which I'm very intrigued by.

Um, yeah, I mean, this is, this is the shit, right? This is, uh, all, all we do is need to, one of these AIs to become self-aware and game over. So. Or we just go back to farming. Yeah. Or that. Oh, we, we have free time again. Must be not.

Actually, the farmers have no free time, Jason. I don't know if you realize. Never knew that. That's just hard. Uh, that's true. Way harder than what we do. Yeah. Well, I've had a garden. It was fun. Okay. Anyways. Okay. Uh, I'm going to let you take this one because it's music related and you like music.

I bet. Who doesn't? We just don't want to pay for it. Uh, this is from Shane J. Simmons. Uh, it's a link from blabbermouth.net. I don't know if this says anything about the state of the music business, but I just found out that anthrax released an album in February. It got to nine on the billboard top 200 and managed to sell 3,400 copies in the first week.

3,400. 34,000. Oh, 34,000. There's a zero in there. See, that's actually good. Yeah. So, and so I'm saying it's, but 34,000. Anyways, I'll save you a listen. If you've ever heard their early 90s stuff, it sounds exactly like that. Okay. Uh, you know, I, to crack the top 10 for selling that many is obviously ludicrous, but we've been following this for a while.

We know, um, the, the billboard top 200 is still charting. I think mostly just sales. I don't know if they include streaming. I don't know. I haven't looked at it. I haven't looked at the charts in so long because they're meaningless and I don't give a shit because it's all Justin Bieber and Rihanna. So. Okay.

What are these charts you speak of? Charts sounds like paper. We don't like paper when the world, you know, good on anthrax for doing that. Uh, not really my type of, of music. Uh, actually Green Day just made the news this week because a rock song has topped the charts for the first time in seven or eight years.

I can't quite remember. Did you just call Green Day a rock band? Well, compared to anything else that's in the charts, Jason. Okay. They, they are, you know, they are poppy punk is what they've always been. They're not a rock band. There, there has not been anything that wasn't R and B or electronica or.

So if they have a guitar, they're rock now. That's pretty much it. Yes. It's got a guitar in it, man. Oh man. That's so sad. All right. Moving on to our iTunes reviews. Hannah Coleman titled. This is an awesome podcast. I actually added some extra words to that, but she just said awesome podcast.

I might be the only 19 year old woman who listens to this podcast. I presume. Actually, you presume fairly wrong. There are a lot of you girls out there. I'm sorry, women out there. And we love you. Jason and Brian makes such a great team covering interesting stories all in one fun podcast with great perspectives on the tech world from both of them.

Well, I would say at least one of us has a good perspective, but yeah. Thanks, Jason. It's always nice when you compliment me. Fizz off. Okay. Moving on. JKweb3, another five star review. Title awesome. Was looking for a fun podcast. That's a good mix of text and tech and media.

And this doesn't disappoint. Although I'm not quite as old. I more than make up for it. And grump. Keep up the good work. Sorry, man. Grump just increases. Yes, yes. The grump just keeps on coming. Now, my favorite one of the week from Wilma Balls Drop. You know, I love your name.

I love your name. And I don't think they are going to drop because your title is, which is also awesome. If you are a meme, a meme aficionado. I am disappointed. All your base are belong to us. Well, it's around the same time, I think. So he gave us a fucking one star. You little cock drop number of whatever.

Because you don't like it. Because you don't like Mr. Robot. Yes, his actual review is Mr. Robot Best. Now, I appreciate you making a point, but you're fucking with our goddamn ratings just to be clever. Take that off, dick.

Yeah, yeah. Or when we find you, we will Kevin Smith your ass and kick you in the balls, and then they will drop on the floor. But anyway. I still laughed. I did. I lulled. There were the lulls. Yeah. Yeah, it was funny. All right.

You can find us on Twitter at GOG Podcast, on Instagram at Grumpy Old Geeks, or at Patreon at patreon.com slash GOG. We have a website at grumpy old geeks.com where you could make your comments about liking Mr. Robot and being I am disappoint, instead of doing it on our iTunes ratings. Where you can listen to shows, leave feedback, or, better yet, ask us questions that we can read on the air.

If you have friends like Will My Balls Drop doesn't, please tell them about the show. And please, if you like the show, drop us an iTunes review. They really do help us out. It'll only take a minute or two. Try not to fuck with us there. Just go to grumpy old geeks.com slash iTunes, and it'll take you right there.

I'm tired, so I'm going to sit down. It must be nice to have so much free time like Jason did. Here comes the 7,000 books he just read.

Well, you know, because now that I know that listening to audio books is just as good as reading the actual thing, I can get through my books. Here we go. This is a really ridiculous list. We did do a list last week, and then it turned out we got to the end, and Kyle was just like, you know, I don't read books.

So we killed the whole segment. Okay. All right. First book is Wild from Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail by Cheryl Strayed. This is the Reese Witherspoon movie, right? I didn't know that before I read it. I didn't know there was a movie before I read the book. Yeah.

One of my clients is actually interviewing her, and I love the topic because I always wanted to walk across the United States, and now I know that I don't. Who doesn't want you to do that, Jason? Everybody. Everybody wants me to not do that. You're going to get hit by a car like Stephen King.

I'm like, well, I'm not famous enough to get hit by a car like Stephen King. But anyway, great book. Really interesting story about a young girl who literally just gets on the trail and goes after her mother dies, and it's a touching story, but it was well written and interesting. Speaking of going back to the classics, I finally read Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut.

I love all Kurt Vonnegut. Slaughterhouse-Five, probably not one of my favorites, but the absolute best entry novel for Kurt Vonnegut. Great. I'm glad you said that because I did not really like this book very much. I've read a couple other Vonneguts. This one, I did not. The Cat's Cradle, I loved.

But Gumbo Snuffbox, not so much. But Slaughterhouse-Five, I thought was boring. That was about it, you know? Yeah. I mean, it is what it is. It's of its time and place. It doesn't have the humor that normally tempers the depression and dreariness that he brings, which I love.

Well, it's a good book. Yeah. It's a good book. It's based on reality and what he actually went through, which is fascinating. But yeah, it's not my top ten in Kurt Vonnegut, but... No, definitely. Yeah. The interesting part is because he was, you know, through the firebombing of Dresden, and that's where, you know, the interesting part comes in.

But for the most part, it just didn't really hook me. Right. A couple... Shit, it was like six months ago now, I read Search Inside Yourself, The Unexpected Path to Achieving Success, Happiness, and World Peace by Ched Meng Tan. You find anything, Jason? Actually, that book helped me quite a bit.

And he has a follow-up called Joy on Demand, The Art of Discovering the Happiness Within. The first book I really enjoyed, and my dad and my family actually have listened to it, and they really enjoyed it, too, and got a lot out of it. Especially for me as an angry young man, there's a lot of the stuff that I always... I like to read to see if there's any nuggets that I can pull out of it.

Because, you know, most of these books are one idea and then 275 pages of filler. So I look for that key idea, take that away, put it in an Evernote doc, and then, you know, reference it when I'm trying to get better at things. This one, I'm actually really enjoying it.

I think it's a good follow-up. If you liked the first book, get this one. If you didn't like the first book, then don't even bother. Because it's not going to help you in any way, shape, or form. Gotcha. The next book I read was Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink, one of the craziest motherfuckers I've ever seen.

Big dude, big dude, ex-seal. I guess, well, no, he's... Once a seal, always a seal like the Marines. Well, you can't be a spidly accountant with the name Jocko. Yes, no. He's one of the scariest looking guys I've ever seen in my life.

Great book. It really is a great book. It's more about owning up to your mistakes and how that can get you farther than trying to skirt around them. And it's couched in a lot of really interesting war stories about, you know, Iraq war stuff because he was over there.

And he was on the same team as the guy from... Chris, what's his name, from American Sniper. Like, the sniper was one of his Overwatch guys when his seal teams were in there. It was just great, you know. Gotcha. I can't remember all the details of who did what to whom and who killed whom.

Right. Because I'm really excited to get to the next book, which is something we both read. But Extreme Ownership, if you're interested in leadership or just not being a weasel and taking responsibility for your fuck-ups, great book. Gotcha. Okay. Speaking of not being able to tell the who's-its and the what's-its and who's been doing what's, that is a lot of the problem I had with the Dark Forest.

The Dark Forest, the follow-up to the three-body problem. Yes, yes. I don't know if it's because I read it while I was at the hospital for three days waiting for... Sniffing formaldehyde and all that? Yeah, doing that. Yeah, doing that. Severely sleep-derived and just kind of hanging out. Or if it's just, you know, a bit of a lost-in-translation issue.

I liked it. By the time I finally got through it, I really enjoyed the book. The first half of the book, I didn't know what the hell was going on. I was totally lost and confused. But once I got there, I got there. It's so interesting to read sci-fi from a completely different cultural perspective.

It's rough. It is rough, yes. It's interesting, though. I really found it interesting, and I really liked this book. Yeah, I remember you posting that you loved this a lot more than the first one. I kind of liked the first one better. See, I understood this book from start to finish.

I wasn't confused about anything that was going on. So for me, it was like a whole bunch of really interesting just concepts. Yeah. And especially the entire concept of what the Dark Forest is. I don't want to spoil it here. But the concept of the Dark Forest and how it relates to extraterrestrial life in the universe is fascinating.

It really is fascinating. It's a very Seven Eves reveal. It is, yeah. You can't really talk about it. And the beginning of the book, when it really kind of like, he puts this thing in motion at the beginning of the book that finally comes to fruition later, and it's just like, damn, that was cool.

I even got goosebumps right now thinking about it, because it was such a really cool reveal and so well thought out. This is a hard one to talk about without it being kind of a spoiler cast, and I think we should avoid that until the final book comes out, because that is soon. I think it's, what, two months out from now?

Yeah. It's kind of, yeah, in November. And I'm definitely going to read that. I'm, yeah, again, the points I want to make, I can't do without spoiling it. Yeah, that's the problem. If you've read the first one, you should definitely read this one. I, again, like I said, by the time I got done with it, I'm happy I did.

I'm very much looking forward to reading the last one and seeing how he's going to kind of end this and wrap it all up. See, and my problem I have with the third book is there doesn't need to be a third book. This ended in a final, it ended in a perfect wrap. There does not need to be a third book.

I can see how he can make one, but... I disagree. Anyways, we'll bring that. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe we'll actually do one of those, like, one-off spoiler casts at some point. So, yeah, we definitely need to, I want to argue that point with you, but after we've read the third book.

Yeah, we just can't, we can't do that right now. All right. Yeah. All right. Good stuff. I bought myself a TV. I'm human again.

Welcome to, welcome to the 20th century, Jason. Yes. Well, no, I haven't had a TV since May, so I finally, you know, had enough money come in from my new clients that I could go out and get a TV. So I got the TCL 50 UP 130 50-inch 4K Ultra HD Roku Smart LED TV 2016 model.

Wow, you went for a 4K? Well, you know why? The 50-inch TVs, even like the 1080Ps, come in at about the same price. This was $499. That's ridiculously cheap. It is. And I got the mounting hardware for like 30 bucks, but I need some friends to come over and help me put it on the wall.

So last night I sat there and had to wrangle the dog so she didn't jump on it and set it up in my bedroom on a little tiny stand that is like, it's almost an inch too small and I'm just like, please don't breathe on it. Please don't breathe on it. Please don't breathe on it. And sat down and watched the first three episodes of Bosch season two because on Amazon Prime it comes out in 4K.

Ah, there you go. Because I wanted to experience the 4K. And I have never heard of TCL before. I haven't either. I don't care. It's 500 bucks. No wonder it was so cheap. Yeah. It's beautiful. It's unbelievably beautiful. I have seen the future and every pore on every face.

I have seen the future. It has acne. It has. The future. I could not imagine people watching porn in 4K. I was about to say, Jason, you might want to avoid that experiment. Well, everybody said that when it went to, you know, 1080p.

And now it's like, oh, geez. Okay, we're going to get down to the chromosome level before we get too much farther. Yeah. It's a great TV, though. Cheap. Super cheap. It's cheap enough where you could get, like, a couple of these and put them in your home for what it costs for, like, you know, a normal massive monster TV.

And Prime shipping is free. I spent another, like, 12 bucks and got it next day. But, yeah. All in all, great TV. For the price, you can't beat it. I can't believe it. It's insane. Yeah. No, seriously. I also bought an Asus Chromebook, an 11.6-inch Chromebook.

I was looking for something. I love my iPad Pro. I love it to death. The problem is I do a metric shit ton of email through Gmail, and I live in Boomerang. If you don't know what Boomerang is and you do a lot of email, go check out Boomerang.

Boomerang does not work on iOS. So, ergo, I need something that I can do all my email on and use Boomerang. Chromebooks are basically just running Chrome. That's it, you know? And it was 200 bucks. And it's got four gig of RAM.

That was my thing. I wanted four gig of RAM and around 200 bucks. And this was the only one I found. It's like a, you know, a year and a half old model or a year old model. Great reviews. It's got a 16 gig SSD, but I put a micro SD in for 64 gig, which costs like 13 bucks.

Right. So I've got huge storage, and I can play movies on it. If I had a Chromecast, I could cast to it. 200 bucks. This thing is a no-brainer. It's amazing. Great keyboard, rock-solid construction. I can plug a mouse into it, which is another thing I can't do with, you know, the iPad.

Yeah. All in all, just for doing anything on Chrome, this is like a game changer for me. And the other nice thing about this, if you have guests over, and they're like, hey, can I use your computer to like check my email and print stuff out? And you're just like always cringe. You're like, eh, no. Sorry, no.

You can just log into this thing in guest mode, and it goes right into Chrome. It's like, done, you know? Right. And you don't have to change anything. And here's the best part about it. If you lose it, just go change your Google passwords. You're done. You know? It's like a disposable, steel-proof computer.

For $200, I highly recommend getting one of these and throw it in your backpack. Cool. Yeah. It's great. And as far as software goes, we use a thing here called Title Cap. We do. We always have to have really nice titles. I prefer, do you go for the Chicago standard, or do you go for the AP standard?

I prefer AP. Okay. There's generally not a whole hell of a lot of difference, but... Generally, the internet does not give a shit either way. Well, unless you're Bob Fogerty, our voiceover guy who always gives me shit if we screw it up.

I know. For work, we use Chicago, but for grumpy old geeks, I always pick AP because it's set by default. If you need to do capitalization, it's a one-page app. Toss in your title, you'll get perfect capitalization every time. Yay. Also in software news, Instagram lets you Zoom now.

Yes, this was all over stupid news. It was. It was very stupid news. I'm like, yay, welcome to 2004. It's always been ridiculous that you couldn't. They finally rolled it out. Yay, good for you. Yep. Yep, finally. Okay. We've talked many, many, many times about Kickstarted in the balls.

My luggage, my Giro Kickstarted luggage. Yep, still not here. Still not here. Three million dollars, over three million dollars. And they can't get the luggage out to anyone. They're spending all that money on those flashy commercials. That's the problem. Well, here's what happens when your main guy is Ken Hertz, who is a very famous entertainment lawyer.

Yes, he is. He's a friend of a friend. A few times. What? I've run up against him a few times. Yes, he's a very good friend of a friend. And he's the reason I found out about the Giro. And it looked like great luggage. Now that I can't travel, it doesn't really matter that it's late.

But I was like, yeah, yeah, great. Yeah, if anybody ever sees it, that's awesome. We'll see. Yes. One thing I did see this week, which I loved, was this Genesis Augmented Gaming demo. It's one, you know, the kids play the card. They play the magic. They play the Pokemon.

This is one where you can put on the VR goggles and you throw your card down. And then the little guys who's on the card pop up in VR or AR and run around and attack each other. I think it's really cool. I want the Star Wars chess set. You know it's coming. You know it's coming.

Can't wait. Yeah. No, I had a whole diatribe about Pokemon Go and all that stuff today. But I'll skip that. And let's go to the last thing here, which is called Fake Spot, which is a website and a Chrome extension that you can use to when you go to Amazon and you want to see if the ratings are real or not.

Just run this on it and it will give you a kind of a rating on whether they think it's real or not, which could which is actually comes in handy when you're trying to buy something expensive and find out if, you know, if it's all just spam, you know, like paid for reviews or if they're actual genuine reviews.

Gotcha. It's a it's one of those handy extensions, kind of like the the Facebook one I put in last week. Love it. Love that. Love this. So there we go. We're dropping some knowledge. Thud.

Media candy. Well, your hatred for Mr. Robot is basically getting us a bunch of one star ratings on iTunes, but I didn't hate it as much as you did. I thought I was OK. I rolled with it. I'm fine. I've caught up. It's OK. I'm not I'm not I haven't thrown anything at the TV.

However, I do agree with Matt Zoller sites over at Vulture dot com, who is saying, are we going to just keep doing these twists all the time? Because if so, I got to stop. And I agree. If there's another twist like they're doing, I'm out. So they didn't piss me off yet, but I'm I'm I'm at my I draw my line here.

I put my line in the sand. Yes, my line is in the sand here. And if they do it again, I'm out because the show is great. Otherwise, it looks beautiful. It's clever. It's well thought out. The tech stuff is even pretty damn close. But yeah, I'm tired of the tricks.

So, yeah, let's just have a straight storyline from now on. OK, so let me let me rebut here. I don't I was annoyed, you know, at the fact that it just ripped off Fight Club so much. Jason, Jason, Mr. Robot Best. Yes, yes, Mr. Robot Best.

So what I I watched this week's episode and I liked how they actually came back into it after the twist. Right. You know, it was a very clever way to do that. And I still like the show. I still watch the show.

I get annoyed at it because I just feel like they're taking stuff out of Chuck Fallon, you know, like notebook. But the problem is that now they're starting to just do. Oh, God. What's the Shama Lama Ding Dongs notebook? Yeah. Everything's got to have a twist at the end.

And I'm tired of the twists. I'm glad that you finally appreciated my Shama Lama Ding Dong reference. I have I have made one convert. I can't even remember his normal name anymore. That's that's how I refer to him. So I have done my job is done here. Mic drop. OK, I always pictured my mind an Indian guy with like the Bowser hair from Sean on up.

Oh, yes. And if you throw water on him, he'll melt. Anyway. Yeah. So I I'm still watching the show because I do enjoy it. I do enjoy it. I am. You know, I when it when it airs, I go straight to Sweden and pick it up. So. OK. All in all, I enjoy it.

I just wish that it was. Yeah. Less twists, more just like go be a bastard. Give us a story. Yeah. Yeah. You know, enough with this internal dialogue shit. Just go be a dick and take down the world at least. Oh, by the way, this time when he got out of.

Let's just say there was a point in this movie or this episode where they actually talked about the credit card issue. Right. And they said this. This is useless now. Yeah. The credit card. So, you know, you were always saying it's like, oh, everything's the same. Well, at least, you know, they kind of said that credit cards were useless.

So there was at least something that came back. They drop a line saying credit cards are useless, but you don't see the ramifications of that at all in the world. You saw that previously in the deli when she was trying to get a sandwich, you know, and like he can't get supplies anymore. And well, yeah, that. Hey, I'm just saying.

OK, well, Stranger Things 2 is coming. We don't know anything about it, but there's a great little teaser for it. We do know something about it. We know show titles. Yes. So that's about it, though. OK. So, yeah, that's the teaser is the is the episode titles for next season.

So we'll we'll have something. But, you know, yeah, we'll see. I love the first one. I don't think there needs to be a second one. I'm expecting diminishing returns, but hope to be pleasantly surprised. Well, here's the thing. We don't know if it's going to be the same cast, different cast, whatever.

You know, that's the that's the trick. It's like, is this going to be a different cast? Which is what I hope for. I want to know. I want a different cast with tie ins. That's going to happen. Yeah. We'll see. Yeah. Bill Nye is getting a show. I don't like Bill Nye. I love him.

He's cranky. He's us. He's like grumpy old science guy. Yeah. I see. I'm on team Neil. You're on team Bill. They're on each other's team. So, you know, it's all good. I'm happy he's getting a show. It's going to be a talk show that's going to have smart people on.

So it should be fantastic. I'm looking forward to it. So it will be. It's a Mythbusters with more science, basically. And we'll see. I'm I'm excited. OK. You should. You should have one. It's going to be on Netflix. Shocking. Yeah. Netflix has all the shows now.

I was going to say, at least more people will see that than Neil's show, which nobody saw because it was on the National Geographic channel, which really sucked. I never saw an episode. I saw one. It's good. OK. But what I will watch today is Narcos is back for season two. I am so excited for this one because I was just like, how are they going to do this?

And they did it. So it's back and it's in 4K. So I can watch it on my giant TV now. God. I can see all the grains of cocaine. Black Mirror is coming back, too, in October. OK. 12 episodes, according to IMDb, which makes me extraordinarily happy because those seasons were British seasons before, which means they were only six and they were very short, you know, and with a six with a Christmas bonus.

All right. And speaking of British shows, I've just gotten into Sherlock, which is three shows per episode. Welcome to 2004. Yeah, I know. I never watched it back in the day. And now, how are you watching it now? It hasn't been canceled yet. You can only watch shows after they've been canceled.

No, no, I have my season. My rule is two seasons in at least. There are three seasons in. Of course, that's only nine episodes. Yes, but they're 90 minute episodes. So I know three feature films. Each one's like a movie and they're brilliantly done. I I'm enjoying every second of it.

Episode two for each season is really generally the crappy one, except for season three, which was all three were good. Yeah. I don't say anything. I've just finished season two. Season three is the best of the bunch. And we got a second trailer for Westworld has come out.

I am beyond excited for the show. Okay. You watch it. I haven't seen the new teaser. I watched the first trailer, but I haven't seen the new trailer. It's good. Okay. I think I think you're going to dig it. Yeah, but you're not allowed to watch it. So how can you watch it?

How can you watch Westworld? Because there's not even going to be two seasons. I'm going to watch it. Hypocrite. Life is not black or white, Jason. Oh, yes. Go ahead. Moving on. CBS has announced that they will have their all access commercial free option, which will cost you $10 a month, as opposed to the $6 it'll cost you to watch it normally with commercials.

And this is the only way that you'll be able to see a Star Trek Discovery. So tell me how it is. I will pay the $6. I will not pay an extra $4 to not get commercials. The last year, I said that this year was going to be the year of unbundling, and that was going to be news.

They have caught on to this stuff. They are making it much more expensive to be unbundled than to stay on cable. So expect this from because they're not getting the subsidies from ESPN. Exactly. So expect this to happen across the board and forget about unbundling. Might as well just go back to cable or Sweden.

Well, I'm going to Sweden. I'm not getting cable. So I will pay for CBS just to check out the Star Trek show because I have to because it's Star Trek. Again, no two seasons. But go ahead. Tell me how it is. Star Trek, Jason. Shut the F up. And speaking of Netflix having absolutely everything, Netflix has the new Christopher Guest movie, the new mockumentary, which is called Mascots.

The trailer is hilarious. I'm looking forward to this. I love all these movies. I don't care if they're the same with just different different vocations. Doesn't matter to me. They're fucking hilarious. So. There you go. All right. And finally, the only superhero thing that I've ever enjoyed is a one off little bit that I think was what we used to call a DVD extra.

But now they just put it out on on YouTube, don't they? Yeah. Like, why is this out there? This is what you're supposed to be paying for. Who the hell knows? It's Thor annoying his roommate Daryl down in Australia because he wasn't in the last movie.

So this is shows what he did with his time off. I laughed hysterically the entire time. And this is all I'll ever watch of this stuff. So, yes. As somebody who watches all that stuff, for the most part, I thought this was so damn funny. I was I was there were parts where it was definitely chuckle rific.

Yes. Good stuff. Are you kidding me? Love it. The first link that I have in Are You Kidding Me? comes from a friend of the show, Robert Fogarty. I don't know where the hell he found this.

Me either. But it is a band called Mac Sabbath, which is, you know, Ronald McDonald, the Hamburglar on drums. What's the purple guy? I can't remember his name. I was going to ask you. I can't even remember the two other guys because, I mean, this is from the 70s, basically.

But they're singing Frying Pan instead of Iron Man. And it's pretty clever. It is. I give him a thumbs up on this for sure. His name was Grimace. Grimace. That's right. Grimace. Did a quick Google there. So what about the Big Mac guy with the horns?

I know they added the horns, but because I don't think a Big Mac ever had a horn or maybe he's the cheat. No, I don't actually remember that one at all. He's a cheeseburger dude because he's got the cheese sticking out. He's I don't think he's a Big Mac. There was there was Uncle O Grimacy, who was like the the Shamrock Shake guy.

OK, well, there's a whole site. I'm putting this in there. There's a McDonald's Wikipedia. I'm dropping this in the show notes. Oh, great, great, great. OK, I was going to ask the fans to send us if they knew who this who this mystery character was, but I will look him up later. Oh, yeah. So we were talking about how Vice has been kicking it out of the park for journalism.

This is a bit frightening, but you know how you said you want to take a walk across the country, Jason? Absolutely. I will meet you at Yellowstone. No, you won't because you'll kill me. There is a section of Yellowstone where apparently you can get away with murder, or at least the legal situation is extremely murky.

Like all national parks, Yellowstone is federal land. Portions of it fall in Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming. Congress has placed the entire park in Wyoming's federal district. It's the only federal court district in the country that crosses state lines. This normally wouldn't matter too much, but a constitutional lawyer has discovered that basically you could probably get away with killing somebody there because as to who is exactly where you would be tried, where the jury would come from, it being on federal land makes it all very strange.

So there you go. Very bizarre. You want to kill someone? Go to this one particular part of Yellowstone and you can hack away. Hey, Joe, let's go camping. Exactly. And if you do do that and want to get out of the country really quickly, and if you're the murdering type, I bet you don't have a particularly good retirement.

If you happen to have $200,000 saved in your retirement and you figure you got about 30 years left to live, nextavenue.org has put together a slideshow of eight countries in which you could theoretically last 30 years on just $200,000. Thailand and Costa Rica are on the list.

The rest of the countries I'm not so sure I'd want to spend my life in. I could happily live in Thailand or Costa Rica. I could too, but I want to know if they're factoring in inflation over these. Well, I was worried about it. I was also thinking tax implications, how you're getting your social security payments.

So you're still going to have to pay taxes on that. Even if you're going to retain your U.S. citizenship, you still have to pay your taxes. But that's what I'm saying. They didn't really show their math on this one. There's no math that's being shown and they don't really get into the intricacies of being an expatriate. This is something I've looked into quite a bit as Canada beckons.

It's complicated. It is complicated. It can be quite expensive. Well, yeah. And you also have to figure in if you are going to retain your American citizenship, you still like every 90 to 180 days, depending on the country, you have to do your border runs to get your stamps so you can because, you know, your visa expires so you can just jump across the border, come back, get your stamp in, stamp out, you're back on the clock again.

And that stuff costs money. Yeah. Most of these countries are not close by. So we're talking quite the flight. Well, especially if you're in the south of Thailand, then you definitely have to get a flight. If you're like, you know. Which is where you want to be if you're retiring. Trust me. Well, you know, I like the gritty nastiness of Bangkok.

It's so Blade Runner-y that I like it there. But if you went there, you wouldn't need 30 years. Exactly. You're going to get shivved in 30 days. You're making 10 tops. So, yeah. Anyway, interesting. And it's just one of those things where you think about how much money you're saving and what you're going to do.

So, looks pretty nice in Thailand. Closing shout outs. Huge shout out to our friend of the show, Kyle Roderick, for stepping in last week while Brian was having his baby issues. Issues being having a baby.

Yes, it was issued forth. Yes, it was. It was issued unto thee. Have child, young man. And definitely check out Kyle's morning show on the Good Stuff Morning Network or podcast network, I guess. It's not a morning network. They play all day long because they're a podcast.

And even into the evening. And if you're listening into the evening, you can go get some beers and check out his app Untappd, where he is the designer over there now. And Brian, he's in your hood. You guys got to go knock back a few. I know. I know. And take the baby. Why not? He's already been to his first happy hour.

He's been to two already. Library Ale House, which I'm sure Kyle is aware of, especially because of the Untappd thing. I'll meet you there anytime, man. And I used to use Untappd. So it's so cool that you're working for them. It's a fun little app if you're a beer guy. Good stuff. Shout out to John Polito, a frequent Coen Brothers actor, dead at 65.

Jason found this during the show, so he will be missed. He was a great, great actor. I loved him. You know, he always played like kind of the creepy smarmy guy. But, you know, he was a good actor. And it's sad that he was way too young, way too young. And I want to give a shout out to KTLA and Vince Scully here in Los Angeles.

If you are a Dodgers fan or even just a baseball fan or even just a sports fan, Vince Scully is as synonymous with Dodgers baseball and sports. He's one of the last broadcasters from the old school. This is his last season. If you are a fan of the Dodgers here in Los Angeles, you know that you are incapable of seeing any Dodgers game unless you have Time Warner Cable.

No bar has Time Warner Cable. They all have DirecTV. For the last few years, we are stuck watching games at home. KTLA here in Los Angeles is coming to the rescue and has secured the right to broadcast Vin Scully's final six games that he is calling. And if you want to meet me down at Library House or Rick's or Finn's, I will be watching these out to listen to Vin call his last few games.

Thanks for listening. I'm Jason DeFilippo. And you can check me out at the newly redesigned and utterly broken JPD.me, where you can find links to all my social media and contact info if you want to hire me for your podcast editing and producing needs. Oh, okay. I'm Brian Schillmeister, and you can follow me on Twitter at Slender Fungus.

I don't have a website for that sort of stuff. I guess SlenderFungus.com. You can hire me, too. I could use... This is why you're broke, man. You have no... I'm really bad. You got no promo. You got no promo. Baby needs some new pair of shoes. Hire me. Daddy needs a new beer. And remember, this episode of Grumpy Old Geeks is sponsored by FreshBooks.

To claim your free month, go to FreshBooks.com slash Grumpy. And we really need you to enter Grumpy Old Geeks in the How Did You Hear About Us section. FreshBooks. It's fresh. Grumpy Old Geeks is a partially fan-supported show. Be like Mayor McCheese and check out our Patreon page at Patreon.com slash GOG.

We really appreciate your support. If you don't want to or can't donate but still want to support the show, please go to GrumpyOldGeeks.com slash iTunes and leave us a few words and five stars or tell a friend about the show. Mr. Robot is best. Intro music for the show is provided by the Bandabungus.

You can find them on iTunes, Spotify, and Apple Music. Or you can donate through Patreon to get 10 exclusive tracks. Outro music for the show is provided by Andy Stochanski. You can follow Andy at Twitter.com slash House of Andy. And he's also on SoundCloud at GrumpyOldGeeks.com slash Andy. Show notes for all the links discussed in this episode can be found at GrumpyOldGeeks.com slash 175.

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